The first thing that reaches his attention is the clicking of her shoes, click, click, click on the stone floor, thunderingly loud in the deep silence, in his pained ears.

He lies numbly with his face turned to the wall, hair falling over his eyes.

Click, click, click. This time, she is alone.

Not that it changes anything; if it there was the slightest chance it that would, she wouldn't be alone.

Click, click. She stops.

He can feel her looking at him, expectant, confused.

'Samekichi?'

He doesn't turn.

'Why won't you say anything?'

He doesn't respond.

'Aren't you happy, Samekichi? We are all… so happy, in this beautiful sea, finally… the way it should have always been! Why don't you see? Sal said… everyone… helped to wake you up, he said! So that you would be happy, as we all are! I want you to be happy, Samekichi… hehe. Aren't you?'

She is bewildered, insistent, bemused at his perceived stubbornness; he can feel her gaze, trained on him, boring into his back.

He still doesn't acknowledge her.

He sees her in his mind's eye; her irises are red, and there are matching eyes opening under the brim of her hat, marking the taint of the Dead Sea; and she is smiling.

He saw it done; still he hears her shrill screams of denial as he claimed her, and took her, and broke her, and changed her; and it was too much.

But she is smiling.

The first time he was taken to see her, to witness what had been done to her, she smiled, and her smile scared him; it was deranged and perverse, ill-fitting the face he had always known as brightly innocent; and it made his head spin and the remains of his world fall apart around him.

But then he saw her smile a different smile.

She had been brought to watch them beat him; and she watched, side by side with him, as the Dead Sea residents kicked and punched him on the other side of the bars; to help him, to wake him up, to make him free and happy, was the lie put over her eyes, was what she believed and what she saw.

And as he strained to look at her, his eye watering, to say something to her, his breath ragged and voice torn, he caught a glimpse of her face; and she was smiling at him warmly and happily, and for a split second he saw her as she had been before, saw her as he had always seen her in his memory; and he smiled back at Wadanohara.

(Her smile was wide enough to hide the bloody redness of her eyes; his smile was faint and tired and the closest he would ever get to defiance.)

Later, she healed his wounds, and even though he felt her hands moving over his strained body and relief washing through his flesh, he didn't look at her.

And he isn't looking at her now.

Nothing matters any more; he lost Wadanohara forever; he will never be free from this cell at the bottom of the Sea of Death; but he saw his Wadanohara's smile.

And that is the image of her he will hold onto, for as long as the sea exists.

About the title: According to vgperson, "the exact value of the text color for the Red Witch Wadanohara bio is 65 red, 0 green… 1 blue." So there's that. Or it could refer to Samekichi being the only Blue Sea resident left. You decide! ;)